September 11 arrest names can be secret - US court

The US government can keep secret the names of hundreds of people arrested or detained after the September 11, 2001, attacks because disclosing the information could help al Qaeda and harm national security, a federal appeals court ruled yesterday.

By a 2-1 vote, the three-judge panel ruled against more than 20 civil liberties and other groups that invoked the Freedom of Information Act, a law that allows for disclosure of certain government records, to challenge the secret arrests.

Deferring to the government's national security claims, the appeals court rejected the argument by the groups that the information must be disclosed under constitutional free-speech guarantees in the First Amendment.

The court said the government could keep secret the names of more than 700 individuals detained on immigration violations and those arrested as material witnesses in the investigation into the hijacked plane attacks on New York and Washington.

It also said the government could keep secret the dates and locations of the arrest, detention and release of all detainees, including those charged with federal crimes, and the names of the lawyers representing the detainees.

The court accepted the US Justice Department's argument that revealing the identities of those who had been detained might help Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

"While the name of any individual detainee may appear innocuous or trivial, it could be of great use to al Qaeda in plotting future terrorist attacks or intimidating witnesses in the present investigation," Judge David Sentelle wrote in the ruling that ordered the dismissal of the lawsuit.

"It is more than reasonable to expect that disclosing the name of every individual detained in the post-September 11 investigation would interfere with that investigation," he said.